Romulo Craveiro Braga

Japanese Visual Culture

William Gardner

McDonald, Keiko I. Japanese Classical Theater in Films. United States of America: Associated University Presses, Inc. c1994.

In the book Japanese Classical Theater in Films the author, Keiko McDonald, explores the relationship between Japanese theater and cinema. She intends to arouse interest in the reader to explore this interdisciplinary area that she discuss throughout his book. She starts by explaining briefly the basic principles of Noh, Bunraku and Kabuki. The author makes the social distinctions between the Noh, an art directed to the most privileged economically, and the Bunraku, which was formed in the Edo period as a traditional puppet form of art performed at the beginning by vagabonds and prostitutes. She highlights the date of 1897 as the first attempt to make a Japanese movie. She explains that the critics at the time identified the three majors characteristics of early cinema as onnagata (female impersonators), benshi (commentators), and center-front. The author mentions the argument that cinema should break away from the traditional theater. People like Norimasa Kaeriyama argued that cross-cutting, close-ups, long shots should be incorporated to the scripts. On the other hand, some critics would argue that traditional performances in the kabuki theater were more easily accepted by the general public.

Being a native Japanese, Keiko McDonald tries to bring to our attention the richness of the Japanese cinema, which was based on Kabuki, Noh and Bunraku. She` presents an engaging challenge to us readers to analyze and study the correlation between theater and film within the Japanese Culture.

Romulo Craveiro Braga